wikipedia

I woke one recent morning at 5 a.m. obsessing about, of all things, the people of New York City — specifically how the population is distributed among the five boroughs: Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. And how that’s changed over time.

I had a general idea. But my nerd brain needed to know for sure. So I went to Wikipedia for data. These charts show the total population, by borough, since 1790.

This chart shows how the proportion of New York City residents in each borough has shifted over time. Decades ago, Manhattan was the center of population. Not anymore, of course:

Note: My family recently relocated to Seoul, where my wife is working as a foreign correspondent for NPR. This post is the first in an occasional series profiling the peninsula’s demographics and politics.

Korean media reported last week that the number of residents moving to other counties fell to the lowest level since 1962, when the government’s foreign ministry began collecting such data. The reports speculated that South Korea’s relatively healthy economy — the 13th-largest in the world — was prompting residents to stay.

Emigration had been on a sharp rise until 1976 as more and more people had been choosing to live in foreign countries for a better life. The Korean economy underwent fast industrialization in the 1970s after rising from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Since then, the number has been declining, and it fell below the 10,000 mark, down to 9,509, for the first time in 2003, the data showed.

The roughly 7 million expatriate Koreans are scattered across the world, but mostly in China, Japan and the United States. This map shows the distribution:

Last night Robert Griffin III became the first Baylor football player to win the Heisman Trophy, the college game’s highest honor. Griiffin was the 76th player to receive the award — and the 28th quarterback — since the tradition began in 1936.

The winner is selected from ballots cast by hundreds of sports journalists, and past honorees. Each votes for three players, and ranks them on scale from first place (three points) to third place (one point). The higher the points received by a player, the more unanimous his selection as the winner.

Griffin received 1,687 points, slightly above the average winner over the years. Here’s how players have compared since the start (colored in Baylor green):